Welcome to my genealogy blog. Genea-Musings features genealogy research tips and techniques, genealogy news items and commentary, genealogy humor, San Diego genealogy society news, family history research and some family history stories from the keyboard of Randy Seaver (of Chula Vista CA), who thinks that Genealogy Research Is really FUN!
Copyright (c) Randall J. Seaver, 2006-2018.

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Saturday, June 17, 2017

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Three Stories for Father's Day

It's Saturday Night -

time for more Genealogy Fun!

Your mission, should you decide to accept it (cue the Mission Impossible! music) is to:1) Sunday, 18 June, is Father's Day. Let's celebrate by writing a blog post about our father, or another significant male ancestor (e.g., a grandfather).2) What are three things about your father (or significant male ancestor) that you vividly remember about him?3) Tell us all about it in your own blog post, in a comment to this post, or in a Facebook Status or Google+ Stream post.Here's mine:I'm choosing to write about my maternal grandfather, Lyle Lawrence Carringer (1891-1976) because I've done this for my father in several years past. Here are my three stories:1) Lyle was a small child as a youth and a small man as an adult. He was over-protected after his birth because his parents lost their first child, Devier David Carringer (1889-1890) at 9 months of age. The earliest photos of Lyle show him in short pants with curly hair.

I think that he started attending school at age 7 but did not graduate from San Diego High School until 1914 when he was age 22. When he entered the United States Marine Corps in 1917 at age 25, he was all of 5 feet 7 inches tall and weighed 121 pounds.

As a boy, he roamed all over San Diego from downtown to East San Diego walking, riding the streetcars or on a bicycle. He loved San Diego and attended many historic events and took photographs of some of them throughout his life.While still a youth (age 14), he started working as a cash boy at Marston's Department Store in downtown San Diego in 1905. By 1917, he had worked as a cashier, mail order clerk, post office clerk and floorwalker. He worked as a clerk and as an accountant at Marston's for many years, and retired in 1960, after 55 years of service.2) Lyle Carringer collected postage stamps and corresponded with other stamp collectors from all over the world. Over the years, friends from Pitcairn Island, New Zealand, Papua-New Guinea and Australia came to visit them. Family, friends and coworkers sent postcards from their travels all over the world. He was also an excellent photographer, and the family albums have many pictures of family groups, San Diego scenes, and of his daughter and grandsons. Lyle loved mechanical things - cars, cameras, and the like. Lyle was a hardy and enterprising man who liked to garden, do handyman work on the rental properties, and go for automobile rides in the countryside. He was a kind, gentle and patient man, yet firm, who loved his wife and daughter very much, but was not a religious person, because his parents had rejected religion after the death of their first child. I don't recall seeing him angry, even once. He enjoyed his three grandsons and encouraged them to collect things (like stamps!), to explore their world, and to get an education. 3) I found this article in the San Diego Union newspaper, dated 24 March 1935, on page 18 (accessed on www.GenealogyBank.com) which describes their back yard in their home at 2130 Fern Street in San Diego where my mother grew up:

Carringer Gardens, Model of Beauty, Have Also Wealth of EntertainmentBy Ada Perry

"Mr. and Mrs. Lyle L. Carringer, 2130 Fern st., are never bored with their garden. They have four fish pools in it filled with finny pets that are always on the move. Sometimes they move out on the grass, but the Carringers chalk this up to playfulness and continue to enjoy the aquatic aspects of their home.

"The Carringer place is distinctly in the livable small garden or outdoor living room class. The pools are strategically located to invite folks outdoors for pleasure and relaxation. One pool, the smallest, is placed near the rear door of the house as a starting point. From there to a sunny larger pool planted to lilies and overhung with shrubs is a natural step.

"Other parts of the garden planted in flowers, cacti and succulents and several fruit trees are easily accessible from the second pool and then the Carringers and their friends naturally gravitate to a lath house furnished with chairs and tables.

"There are sources of amusement in the lath house. The remaining pools are located there. One is a rill in the heart of a pretty rockery and the other a shadowy oval presided over by a rice plant with curving stalks topped with leaves like giant hands. Directly above the pool a tree rests apparently on the water. The invisible stand which holds it up represents some clever household ingenuity. It was formerly a piano stool.

"A grill is built at the end of the lath house on a rock structure. The grill space can be filled with a decorative potted plant when not in use although the Carringers have found it a consistent entertainer.

"Next to the grill is a glass house annex with a surprise feature. On shelves are aquariums filled with tropical fish, paradise, moons, guppies and other fancy swimmers weaving about in grassy water jungles; blinking, gobbling and raising families in the most distracting style. The glass house is heated for them and each aquarium has individual radiators and thermometers for perfect comfort.

"Tropical aquariums are often kept indoors but the Carringers have theirs handy to the pools where fish life from goldfish to guppies can be observed. Certain of the tropicals are moved to the goldfish pools at favorable times for variety."

I remember the lath house and the glass house and the fish ponds in them, but I don't recall the other features. They moved out of that house in 1950 and built their house on Point Loma soon after.I guess that's more than three stories, but I wanted to tell all of them.

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About Me

I am a native San Diegan, a graduate of San Diego State University, a retired aerospace engineer, a genealogist and a family guy.
My wife (Angel Linda) and I have two lovely daughters, and five darling grandchildren. We love to visit them and have them visit us.
Angel Linda and I love to travel to visit friends and relatives, to sightsee, to cruise or to do genealogy. Our travels have taken us all over the USA, to England, Down Under and Scandinavia.
For earlier posts (not visible on the main post list), please see the Archives listed below by month.
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Contact me via email at randy.seaver@gmail.com